IN THE AIR-LOCK.
"There's the Sun, Rowena. It's day!"
Day! Already the word had lost its meaning. Day and night--mere terms
of our rotating Earth. Here in Space the Sun blazed in its field of
black; the stars gleamed untwinkling; the quarter Moon hung white, like
a broken, curved limb against the dead-black infinity of emptiness.
Time seemed eternal here.
Rowena stood beside me on the Flying Cube's deck. Together we gazed at
the firmament. We were only a few hours upon the voyage; and the Earth
still hung beneath us, a great spreading expanse filling all the lower
heavens.
We had long since passed through the atmosphere, ascending an edge of
the Earth's conical shadow; and now we plunged from it and the Sun
blazed with a strangely flaming glory.
Rowena gestured to the Earth. "It's dwindling. Our little Earth--how
small it looks now, Jack!" Her hand touched my arm. I seemed to feel
a difference in that touch. As though her fingers were lingering,
caressing.
"Rowena--"
Within me there sprang a sudden rush of emotion. I think, perhaps, that
from the first moment I saw her I felt instinctively that of all the
world, this was the woman for me--This girl, so queenly, aloof, but
with gentle, wistful eyes.
"Rowena--"
Perhaps it was the starry firmament around us; the tiny cube seemingly
hung here motionless with great soundless blazing worlds strewn about
the black heavens. And our Earth seeming so small--dwindling every
moment that we watched it. It was as though all this were drawing
Rowena and me together, making us realize our littleness, futility,
unimportance, and because we were so unimportant to all the Universe,
it made us much more important to each other.
"Rowena!"
I must have stood there stupidly reiterating her name. The length
of deck was empty save for us two. Through the bull's-eyes, mingled
moonlight, sunlight, starlight and earthlight came slanting in soft
silver shafts.
"Jack--"
She swayed toward me; was in my arms; her arms up about my neck; her
lips returning my kisses, with all her calm regal dignity swept away so
that this was just a girl.
There was a moment when we floated off upon the torrent of a new-found
love, clinging together, alone in the Universe.
Then I heard a step, and a voice--Jimmy's voice: "Oh, I say--beg your
pardon--I'm gone!"
"Oh!" Rowena cast me off. But Jimmy had made good his words, whirling
like a rabbit and vanishing into the upper corridor doorway.
We both were laughing. "Oh," said Rowena. "How dreadful!"
"Dreadful? Rowena dear--"
I touched her, but she moved away.
"Dreadful," I said, "that Jimmy should have seen us?"
"No, of course not."
"That you should--love me?"
"No--"
"Well, you do, don't you?"
"Jack--" Her smile was gone. She faced me with quiet, level gaze. "Do
you think so, Jack?"
Her eyes were shining in the earthlight, and in them I could not miss
the light of her love for me. Just a moment, while we gazed. The spell
broke, she laughed again.
"Dreadful, Jack, that I should yield to a thing like that--now, with
this voyage ahead of us--with Guy, out there on Mercury."
* * * * *
We were presently talking of saner things. Dr. Grenfell had calculated
this voyage would be a matter of some three weeks. Mercury would be on
the other side of the Sun before we reached it. We would pass Venus in
five or six days; the Moon we were already passing.
And we talked of Croat. It seemed obvious that he was the mysterious
stranger who had assaulted the Maine rector.
"Still on Earth," I said. "His ship came, sent down its silver ball
like a tender, while the ship itself hovered out here. Just about here,
probably."
That had been on August 10th. It was now September 16th. Croat's
ship had hovered out here while the ball went down into the Earth's
atmosphere, stayed about a week and the raids were made. Then the ball
had come up--with the Earth-girl captives, but without Croat. Mercury
was drawing daily further away; the Mercutians, afraid to go back down
for their leader, had doubtless taken their ship back to Mercury. Croat
was now on Earth. At the next inferior conjunction--next December--the
Mercutian ship would doubtless come again to try and rescue Croat.
"But we will reach Mercury before that, Rowena, and stop them. If we
can get that vehicle and smash it, down on Earth they'll capture Croat
in time, of course, and this threat will be removed."
We had no specific plans of what could be done when we reached Mercury.
Rowena said suddenly, "I'm wondering if Guy and Tama were on the
Mercutian ship when it waited out here."
"But if they had been--"
"That winged girl who was shot at the White Camp did what she intended
and stowed away on the ship. In his message Guy hinted that he and
Tama, were going to try it."
This was the old calm Rowena, discussing the affair with calm logic.
"But if they did hide on the ship, Jack, it's evident that they were
not able to get in the silver ball and descend. Either they were still
in hiding, or Croat had found and captured them, keeping them up here
on the ship, while he went down--"
It was all theory, of course. An hour went by. The Earth shrank
amazingly with our upward flight. And as the cube turned and swung
toward the Sun, using all the Sun's giant gravitational force to pull
us, the firmament shifted. The Earth seemingly came up level with us--a
monstrous ball hanging level with the deck windows. The sunlight struck
it full; a great reddish ball, shrinking and turning silver.
Again a step sounded behind us; a cautious step--Jimmy again.
"I say, all right for me to show up now?"
"All right, Jimmy," Rowena laughed.
He came toward us along the deck. "You going to stand there forever?
We've had breakfast downstairs. I told them you two were busy."
"Jimmy!" Rowena protested.
"Why not? You were, weren't you? Anyway, the doc says for you to come
down now--at once. That's an order. You're to have your breakfast and
then go to sleep."
We followed him obediently into the second floor corridor and down the
ladder-steps and into the lounge.
"You're sleepy," Jimmy added. "If you don't know it, that's your hard
luck. We've all been up all night. The doc has turned in, and Rance is
in command."
At 4 P.M., by Eastern Standard Time back on Earth, which we were
maintaining on the Cube, it was Grenfell's plan for us to start the
regular routine of watches which would be held throughout the voyage.
It was now 9 A.M.
Rowena and I had a light meal. She went to her cabin--one of those off
the second floor cross corridor. Diagonally from her, on the corridor's
opposite side, was the cubbyhole Jimmy and I were to occupy. At
Rowena's doorway we left her.
"Sleep well, Jack."
Jimmy whirled on her like a little bantam, gazing frowningly up at her.
"And how about me?"
"You too, Jimmy!"
"Thanks."
* * * * *
He was grinning as we entered our room. "Nice girl that. Crazy about
you. Well, I don't blame her. You two giants look as though you were
born for each other."
We lay in our bunks. Earthlight streamed in the bull's-eye window,
until Jimmy drew down its shade.
I think that in a few moments Jimmy was asleep; but for a time sleep
would not come to me. The interior of the cube was silent save for the
faint hum of the current in the gravity plates. And vibrationless; an
utter lack of the sense of movement, though now we were plunging toward
the Sun at a velocity which in comparison to the planets was still
slow, but inconceivably rapid compared to any vehicle traveling upon
Earth or in the air.
I drifted off into an uneasy slumber.
This must have been about 10 A.M. Dr. Grenfell was asleep in his cubby
up in the third tier. In the room next to Jimmy and me, Baker and
Gibbons were sleeping.
It left Rance and two other men--Jones and Allen by name--in command of
the cube. Rance was in the little dome-observatory, at the telescope
and working out a chart of our course. For all his skill with
explosives and his experience with the New York bomb squad, he was
versed in higher mathematics, and upon him Dr. Grenfell depended for
much of the routine navigational work.
Jones and Allen were both in the lower tier, watching the mechanisms
there and answering Rance's occasional bell-signals.
I have no idea what awakened me. I found myself fully aroused, with the
startled feeling that something was vitally wrong. Jimmy was peacefully
snoring in the bunk over me. The cube interior was silent as always.
Our slide-door to the corridor was closed, as Jimmy and I had left it.
My watch gave 3 P.M.; I had slept five Hours.
The ominous feeling passed after a moment. I sat up in the bunk,
thinking about it; and concluded it was caused by the strangeness of my
surroundings when I had so suddenly awakened.
I tried to doze again; Dr. Grenfell did not want us to assemble until
4 P.M. But I was restless; Jimmy's snores annoyed me. I went to the
bull's-eye porte-window, raised the shade a trifle. Our window faced
the Earth. How amazingly it had dwindled! It hung level with us--a
full-round sunlit ball, filling no more than a tenth of the visual
hemisphere of the firmament. The tracery of the continents and oceans
was plain.
And beside the Earth, to make the third apex of a triangle with our
cube, the Moon hung cold and bleak--incredibly black and white with
shadows and sunlight.
I turned from the window, and decided I would go down to the lounge
room and wait for the four o'clock conference. Perhaps Rowena would be
there.
As I passed her corridor cabin-door, I found it flung wide. She had
closed it, I recalled, when she retired. And in the corridor, just
outside her threshold, lay one of her slippers. I stumbled over it,
picked it up; and found my heart unreasonably pounding. She had been
wearing these slippers when Jimmy and I left her at this door five
hours before.
As I straightened with the slipper, I glanced into her cabin. It was
empty. Its drawn shade was bright with the sunlight glare. The bed had
been occupied; a chair beside it was overturned.
All this was utterly unlike Rowena. I hurried down to the lounge. No
one was there. The shades were drawn to bar the sun-glare; but on the
other side they were up and the earthlight and moonlight streamed in
full. The room was bright. And it suddenly seemed horribly empty and
horribly silent.
I called, "Hello there! Any one around?"
* * * * *
From one of the adjoining mechanism rooms, Jones appeared. A big,
florid fellow in white shirt and linen trousers. His inevitable huge
black cigar was in his mouth.
"Hello, Dean. Sleep well?"
My sudden fear dissipated. "Yes. Where is everybody?"
"Asleep, I fancy. Allen went up to the dome a while ago to stay with
Rance. I'm on duty here--but there's nothing much to do. It was the
deuce keeping our pressure equal, but we've got it right now. Your
breathing comfortable?"
"Quite." I had flung myself in one of the wicker lounge seats; but
immediately I was up again. "Have you seen Miss Palisse?"
"No. She's in her cabin, isn't she?"
"No, she isn't. The door was wide open as I passed."
"Well, she didn't come down here--went up to the dome with Rance
probably."
But she was not in the dome. Rance and Allen were there, and they
had not seen her. Dr. Grenfell was still asleep in his cubby off the
third-floor chart-room.
Fear was plucking at me. But Rance said with a smile, "Try the deck,
Dean. No doubt she's Earth-gazing. She'll be glad to have you join her."
I hurried down, and again went the length of the second floor corridor.
This time, I peered into each of the rooms as I passed. Jimmy was still
sleeping noisily; Baker and Gibbons were asleep in the adjacent cabin;
and all the other rooms were empty.
I went out to the deck. Went around all four sides almost at a run. No
one was there.
Panic was upon me now. Back within the cube I called frantically:
"Rowena! Rowena, where are you?"
It aroused them all. "Rowena, where are you? Rowena, answer me!"
Jimmy came rushing out. "Heavens, Jack--what in the devil--"
"I can't find Rowena!"
I tried to calm myself. She was here somewhere, of course.
Baker and Gibbons came tumbling from their room. "What's the trouble?"
From the third tier Dr. Grenfell was calling, "Dean! Dean, what is
it?" and from the lounge-room downstairs Jones shouted up a similar
question. We were all in a moment, wildly searching. Shouting back and
forth to each other; and calling:
"Rowena! Where are you? Where are you?"
The cube echoed with our voices and the tramp of our feet.
But Rowena had vanished!
Stark horror seized us as we gathered in the lounge. Rowena had
vanished. But there was only a moment of that baffled horror; and then
a new alarm.
Jimmy's voice from the second tier:
"Jack! Jack! Here she is!"
His words, "Here she is!" should have been reassuring. But his
terrified tone combined with them was infinitely frightening.
I leaped up the ladder-steps, with the others after me. We met Jimmy.
He was wild-eyed and breathless, waving his automatic.
"Jack, my God, she--Jack, he has--Come here!"
I went after him at a run, out the corridor door to the deck, around
one of its angles to D-face. Five minutes ago I had run this length; I
had unheedingly passed the closed door-slide of the air-lock room.
Jimmy dashed there now. Halted, with upraised weapon.
"Jimmy--look!"
In the little air-lock room projecting out from the deck, Rowena was
crouching. And beside her, the huge figure of a man. His arm was around
her, holding her half caressingly, half in menace. His other arm hugged
his upraised knees; in his hand, a strange globular weapon pointed at
Rowena's breast.
It was Croat!